Everyone knows that the internet is serious business. And serious business deserves serious recognition. So, in the spirit of overly self-important awards shows everywhere, your editors are pleased to present the First Annual Tomahawk Nation Awards.

This is the nomination thread. You, the reader, will have the opportunity in this thread to suggest nominees for the following categories:

Story/Editorial of the Year

Comment of the Year

FanPost of the Year

Commenter of the Year

Best New Commenter

DocHoliday2 Memorial MS Paint Award

TrickNole Self-Fulfiling Prophesy Award

In order to make the final poll and be eligible for the corresponding incalculable measure of internet credibility that comes with winning a "Tommy™", someone will need to nominate a person, story, or comment for a particular category, and that nomination will need to be seconded (i.e. recommended/turned green). In the event there are too many nominees for a particular category for the polling software to handle, staff will narrow the field before publishing the final poll sometime next week.

In order to keep this thread somewhat orderly, please post nominations in the following format, with one nomination per post:

Category-Nominee.

If you can, a link to the post or comment would be helpful as well.

Have fun and good luck to all those who might be nominated!

(K-Man, pictured above, hopes to take home his first real Tommy™).

Generally, I consider myself to be a reasonably considerate individual. While I don't often take public transportation, when I do, I offer my seat to women, children, and the elderly. If I have to sneeze indoors, I do so into the crook of my elbow to help avoid spreading germs through handshakes. When I invite people into my home, I offer them a drink, let them sit in my favorite chair, and generally worry about their own comfort level before I think about my own. I even volunteer in the community and donate money to various charitable causes.But when it comes to conduct at sporting events, "society" and I cannot seem to get on the same page.

Rather than belabor my experience at Doak on Saturday, which I suspect was not uncommon amongst my vertical brethren, I decided to compile a Stander's Manifesto of sorts; a guide to assist those who might be unfamiliar with what to expect when encountering someone who is standing, cheering, stomping their feet and clapping their hands. While I don't expect to win the hearts and minds of those tethered to the cold, hard bleachers, perhaps those folks who read this will come away with a bit more appreciation for perspective of a seemingly recalcitrant Stander.

Point 1: Your Legs Are Not Broken

Unless you have some sort of medical condition that prevents you from alternatively standing and sitting for intervals of no more than 10-15 minutes (self-induced obesity doesn't count, but age might), you should probably expect that, if asked, I will politely decline to sit down while the Home Team is on Defense. Shocking, I know, but don't worry, you have plenty of other options. For starters, you could join me in standing. If that doesn't interest you, perhaps you might consider decamping to one of the many available empty seats within spitting distance of your current location. Also, if you are unhappy with your line of sight, don't forget the massive jumbotron (located above the student section). I use it on a regular basis, especially when my line of sight is impeded or sub-optimal.

Point 2: You May Be Trespassing

If you are someone who is sitting behind me (for the first and hopefully only time), who acquired his tickets in an unknown series of transactions for what I can fairly presume was less than face value, please be advised that the people who normally occupy your seats are also Standers. I know this, because we have seen each other, and high-fived or consoled each other, at nearly every game for the past six years. That's right, you have wandered your way behind enemy lines and into a bunch of season ticket holders.

Perhaps you should have sprung for more expensive tickets, rather than sitting directly adjacent to the student section, where a younger, slightly more energetic crowd tends to reside. If stadium seats are like real estate, it was probably unwise to speculatively invest in a location without any sort of homeowner's association or zoning restrictions. To carry that analogy a bit further, you might want to consider that some people, myself included, may be sitting in cheaper seats than they would prefer, in an attempt to compromise with the Priority 1 Wimbledon crowd. Anyway, welcome to my neighborhood.

Point 3: Sitting is a Catch 22

My wife has a set of pipes on her. When she stands and yells, which she does for nearly every defensive play, those in her cone of sound probably feel like they are topside on the Steve Irwin, being bombarded with noise from a Japanese-deployed LRAD. At one point, I could distinctly hear two noises in the stadium, my wife, and what I believe was a vuvuzela. The vuvuzela was louder, but only marginally so. If my wife were to yell and not stand, she would, without exaggeration, cause the people in front of us to go temporarily (and possibly permanently) deaf.

Continue reading the Manifesto after the Jump:

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Back in January, when Nick O'Leary committed to the Seminoles, Tomahawk Nation had this to say:

O'Leary stands 6'3" and weighs 235 lbs. Nick does everything on the football field well. He is an excellent blocker for his size. His hands are well above average, making difficult catches regularly. His athleticism is unquestioned (he has scholarship offers for multiple different sports, including lacrosse offers at elite Northeastern schools). He plays the game smart, running precise routes and separating in the seam. Great body control and balance. His agility and low center of gravity help him to get open underneath. O'Leary is a match-up nightmare for opposing defenses. He is too big for a safety and much too quick for a college linebacker. Think Dallas Clark of the Indianapolis Colts. Coach Fisher is delighted to have O'Leary aboard and he will certainly be used in a variety of formations and plays very early in his career.

O'Leary chose Florida State over offers from Florida, Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Miami and Ohio State. With the exception of USC and Texas, O'Leary was offered by every major program in the country.

As you can see from the video below, that analysis would appear to be spot on.

Keeping in mind that  the coaches have been fairly generous with their praise about O'Leary's practice performance, notwithstanding the staff's normally reserved approach toward players who have yet to actually contribute in game situations, there is great reason to be optimistic that O'Leary will be a significant contributor this season.  But what does that mean in the context of FSU's offense?  Jump to find out.

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Once you are done savoring the delicious radioactive fallout served up by the Nuclear Assassins over at Yahoo Sports,  jump for some links to additional open practice video. 

If you missed Tomahawk Nation's earlier "award winning" open practice coverage, click here.

Enjoy.

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Every Florida State media outlet has basically beaten to death over the past few years the less than impressive attendance at Doak.  If you wish to revisit the specifics of these issues in excruciating detail, read this post by our friend Andrew Carter over at the Chopping Block.

Every Florida State fan who has considered the issue probably has an opinion as to the root cause of the problem.  The economy generally, disgruntled fans who were upset with the way Coach Bowden and FSU parted ways, gas prices, the improved HDTV viewing experience, lack of booze (for sale) inside the stadium, too many early games, too many games against marginal cupcakes, poor product on the field, etc.  Realistically, some or all of these have contributed to the below capacity attendance.  

Whichever reason you may have favored in the attendance debate, it is beyond dispute that the issue does not need to be exacerbated.

Enter the City of Tallahassee.  Find out what they are doing to help supress attendance at Doak after the jump. 

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For most FSU fans, the only thing worse than the 14 point swing that resulted from the interception nullifying personal foul called on Greg Reid was the reaction from the ACC coordinator of officials, Doug Rhoads, who took the position when asked that the hit was illegal. 

Re-watch the hit after the jump, then dive into the ambiguous world of the NCAA as we try to answer the following questions:

1)What were the officials thinking?

and

2) What can be done to protect the safety of the players without turning football into soccer?  

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[Editor's Note:  This letter is intended to be funny and is not serious.  Except that obviously we never advocate anyone being kicked in the testicles.]

Dear Coach Viloria,

I am writing you to discuss the safety of one of the most important assets on the 2010 Florida State Football Team.  That asset is kicker Dustin Hopkins

You may not be aware of this, but Dustin Hopkins first career field goal was a 52 yard attempt, in his very first college game, against Miami.  Hopkins made that kick, and also converted on a 45 yard attempt.  While FSU lost that game on a last second drop by Jarmon Fortson, most Seminole fans left that game confident they had a special kicker on their hands who would go on to be a star.

Fast forward to November 13, 2010.  Despite missing two critical kicks in the North Carolina game the prior week, Head Coach Jimbo Fisher never lost confidence in Dustin Hopkins.  That confidence was justified, as Hopkins converted on all 3 field goal attempts against Clemson, including a historic 55 yard walk off field goal.

As a man who values physical contact and aggression, you'd probably agree that there are two positions in sports which seem to attract a certain brand of oddball.  Hockey goalie and field goal kicker.  For whatever reason, these positions seem to have more than their fair share of guys who, for lack of a more precise way to explain it, are just plain weird.  Perhaps it takes a certain kind of mental makeup (headcase)  to decide that you'd rather stick your body in front of a 100 mph slapshot rather than shoot one off your own stick, or that you'd like to play football while avoiding as much physical contact as possible.

While Hopkins doesn't appear to suffer from these personality deficiencies, he does have at least one problem, which if left unchecked, might cause of a serious problem for the Seminole offense.

Here at Tomahawk Nation, we've highlighted the impressive size gains made  under your watchful eye.

via assets.sbnation.com

Beyond hard gains facilitated by the implementation of the Hatch System, it appears you have already developed quite the rapport with your players.  As confirmed in the video below, Dustin Hopkins has been known to get pumped up by asking you to smack him around a bit.

FSU player Dustin Hopkins gets slapped (via xfycnxwarrior)

Coach, I'm writing to remind you that the internet never forgets.  After the jump, feel free to watch the video and refresh your recollection.

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After a poor performance against Oklahoma on both sides of the ball, Florida State got back to basics against BYU.  Florida State rushed for 278 yards on 44 attempts. Redshirt freshman Henry Orelus started for Andrew Datko who was out with a shoulder injury. Orelus did a decent job as the Noles managed to run for 6.3 yards a carry.  The ground game got a strong effort from Ty Jones (15 carries/95 yards) and Christian Ponder (13 carries/50 yards), with Chris Thompson (9 carries/123 yards) showing why he was rated as one of the biggest home run threats in the country during his senior high school season. The bulk of Thompson's rushing yards came on two carries, an 83 yard burst sprung by a great block from fullback Lonnie Pyror, and a 31 yard scamper (with a personal foul tacking on an additional 15 yards to that play).

The real story was the defense, which managed to hold BYU to only 191 total yards (sack yards lost, -61).  BYU abandoned the two quarterback platoon system fairly early in the game, going exclusively with Freshman Jake Heaps.  Heaps was unable to get much going in the air, and the FSU defense appeared to show the benefits of the improved off-season strength and conditioning program, especially in the second half, where they consistently applied pressure.  FSU's defense was able to leverage the down and distance, with BYU converting on just 4 of 15 third downs.  Frankly, BYU's line looked slow, fat, and out of shape, and had the officials not decided to swallow their whistles, BYU's offense might have looked even worse, as they consistently held the Florida State front four in an effort to protect their young quarterback.   Even with the many called and uncalled infractions, FSU recorded 8 sacks against BYU, a team that had yet to give up one sack coming into the game.

Despite a fumble by Bert Reed inside the red zone, Florida State won the turnover battle 2-1.  The FSU defensive line forced and recovered a fumble, and Xaiver Rhodes picked off a pass after a nice play by JuCo transfer Mike Harris to tip the ball. 

This was a solid win over a quality opponent, but don't expect Jimbo Fisher and the Noles to be satisfied.  The passing game struggled for the most part, and despite adequate protection, Ponder was mostly unable to fine anyone open down the field.

While many of us at Tomahawk Nation like to look at advanced metrics of performance, and the QB position is no exception, many Heisman trophy voters have never even heard of a statistic like yards per attempt.  When considering quarterback performance, their vote is going to be based upon several things: hype/highlight reel type plays, team record, school stature, passing yards, touchdowns, and td/int ratio.

There is little dispute that Ponder has the tools to become Florida State's third Heisman Trophy winning quarterback.

Christian Ponder Highlights (via bzotheman)

Florida State finished the 2009 season with 3523 receiving yards, an improvement of over 1,000 yards from 2008 on just 50 more attempts.  While much of this increased production can be attributed to the explosive, accurate play of Christian Ponder (pre-injury), the experience and depth of the 2009 receivers far surpassed what Ponder had to work with in 2008.

With the dismissal of Jarmon Fortson, and the departures of Rod Owens and Richard Goodman, certain parallels have emerged between the 2010 Seminole receivers and the 2008 group.  Will this drag down Ponder's Heisman campaign?

Come explore, starting with the conclusion of the 2007 season, after the jump...

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“We tell our players, ‘Let’s take Doak back,’” Fisher said. “To take Doak back, we need you. We need to fill the stadium up. We’re going to do our part and you’re going to be proud of the group that’s out there. Let’s do it together. …

“The spring game has never been a big deal around here as much as it has in some other places. I don’t like to read that this stadium has 80,000, 60,000 and 70,000 at their spring game. Why can’t we? Why can’t we come support them?”

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The stated public goal is 50k attendance.  Per Seminoles.com, parking lots open at 10 a.m.   Parking is first come, first served.

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So, whose coming to the Spring Game and what are your tailgating plans?

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PS-

I figure if enough people are interested, we can get a group buy on the:

Carnivore

I'm guessing it doesn't come with the girl in the last picture, but maybe we could ditch the flames and hook up a custom TomahawkNation paint job.  I'm down for a 1/25th fractional ownership interest.

First, take a quick look at this article  from NCAA Basketball Fanhouse on points of emphasis in the ACC this season.

To sum it up, the article specifically focuses on the zero-tolerance policy for taunting, and in a supreme twist of irony, features comments from none other than Grievez Vasquez, who the author hilariously describes as the player "informally picked as the player most constrained by the new [taunting] rule."

Later in that same article, the author discusses the implementation of the blocking-charging area (akin to the NBA halo).

So, did you skim the article above?  Or even open it and close it quickly?  Congrats, I suspect you know more about what the ACC officials are supposed to be focusing on than Karl Hess and his crew. Hess has reputation for interjecting himself into games, so much so that ESPN announcers have taken specific on-air exception with his officiating style. Here is a video, and no, I didn't make up the title.

McDonagh, Raftery, and Bilas agree Karl Hess sucks (via coniel)

To be sure, Hess didn't lose the game for Florida State.  However,  he certainly flexed his "muscles" and flashed his ego, yet again, at the most critical and inappropriate of times.  While perhaps creating temporary satisfaction for some of the student section, the projectiles hurled at Hess & company at the end of the game will be something he will carry with him and hold against FSU every time he comes back to Tallahassee.

As has been previously alluded to by MattDNole, its post-signing day hangover time.   While I'm sure our crackerjack recruiting staff is already hard at work on our 2011 Big Board, the rest of us have an intolerable wait until Spring Practice ramps up.  

To that end, here is the Signee chart, courtesy of Seminoles.com.   I've put my off-the-cuff redshirt projections into the chart, indicated with a (R) next to the player name.

Please post your projections and comments below, and we can revisit as the offseason progresses:

via cdn.bleacherreport.com

You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when coach brought Dustin home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack... it grew by one. So there... there were two of us in the wolf pack... I was alone first in the pack, and then Dustin joined in later. And six months ago, when Dustin introduced me to you guys, I thought, "Wait a second, could it be?" And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolf pack. Four of us wolves, running around the panhandle together, in Tallahassee, looking for field goals and touchbacks. So tonight, I make a toast! -

Phil the Foot, Pre-National Signing Day, 2009

With sincere apologies to Zach Galifianakis, Florida State's kicking game in 2008 truly was a one man wolfpack, and the sole and managing member of that pack was Graham Gano .  In fact, Gano was first player in Bobby Bowden's tenture at FSU to handle the starting punting, place kicking, and kickoff duties in the same season, and became the only player in school history to make more than 90% of his field goal attempts.

Gano with his trophy, via www.grahamgano.com

At the conclusion of last season, TomahawkNation broke down the numbers and opined as to what the departure of  2008 Lou Groza Award Winner Graham Gano might mean for the 2009 Seminoles. 

To summarize, that article made a couple of  predictions concerning the Seminoles' Kicking Game in 2009:

A) FSU will work to limit the kicker's attempts.  While this is usually an unspoken goal of any good offense, FSU had the luxury of falling back on Gano, especially in long yardage situations.  This should make for more "exciting" football, with FSU going for it more often on marginal fourth downs.  A shift toward a more aggressive approach should be compounded by the fact that Gano's punting was a serious weapon in and of itself, which had above average potential to pin opposing offenses deep inside their own territory. 

B) All other things being equal, FSU will likely lose at least one close game in 2009 which could have been put in the win column if the place kicker had delivered a clutch field goal.  Earlier in this post, three conference games where Gano's perfect kicking was the catalyst to victory were identified (Miami, VT, NCST).  The laws of statistics and averages are strongly against this kind of repeat performance, particularly in light of the fact that Gano made field goals of 50 yards or longer in each of those wins.

C) FSU fans heartbeats will once again become dangerously critical on or around Labor Day, 2009.

Note:  Ironically, it is possible that in 2009, FSU might be expected to score more points with a similarly capable offense and kicker who is less accurate, since it has been well documented that teams who are aggressive in these situations (i.e., going for it on fourth down in marginal field goal territory) should expect to score more.  For a more detailed discussion of this hypothesis, see http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/users/dromer/papers/PAPER_NFL_JULY05_FORWEB_CORRECTED.pdf.

Did those predictions come true?  After the jump we explore these areas and more:

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via i49.tinypic.com

v.

 In the words of ESPN's Ivan Maisel, "The Florida-Alabama matchup has come to define the SEC championship game".  This year, the winner gets a shot at an undefeated season and a National Championship.

Talk about the game after the jump.  

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via blog.imgacademies.com

If you are a Florida State football fan and reading this post, it is understandably difficult to think about field goals without the heartbreak of past defeats springing immediately to mind. 

Going into the 2008 campaign, those wounds were still fresh as ever.  By way of example, this article from TBO.com, titled "As FSU Kicker, Gano Expects Questions" appears to be calculated to remind Graham specifically - and FSU fans generally - of the pressure and legacy of the Miami kicking game debacles.  

In the process of shattering this self-defeating spiral (or maybe it was the 2005 Miami Muff that put this one to bed for good) it is almost hard to remember that after losing dependable Senior Gary Cismesia  to graduation, Florida State was without a clear-cut frontrunner at the place kicker position. 

While the question of who would be tapped to replace Cismesia's offensive output (which accounted for 36% of FSU's points in 2007) was not completely settled, Graham Gano appeared to have the inside track.  Or he did, at least until he tore the meniscus and some of the cartilage in his right knee, reportedly by attempting a rugby punt off the wrong foot during August practice. 

Continue the story and read some (light) statistical analysis from the author, plus excellent commentary and advanced statistics from FSUncensored, after the jump.

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